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Ecological Debt:
The Health of the Planet and the Wealth of Nations
by Andrew Simms
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Ecological Debt is a simple enough concept - the growth of Western capitalist
consumerism has been built on resource use that is beyond the means of the
land upon which Western states are built. Resources have had to be used from
elsewhere to perpetuate growth. And many of these resources are not renewable.
Thus three forms of debt have been created. A debt to those in the Third World
from whom we in the West have wrenched resources for at best a fraction of their
value to us, and at worst at the expense of the communities we have found
there and enslaved to our resource depleting machine. A debt to future generations
due to the waste of one-use-only resources for our frivolous acquisitiveness. And a
debt to the biosphere as a whole and thus to all non-human denizens of our planet.
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Simms is plainly aware of the depredations we have made on the latter, and that we
are harming the prospects for our children, but his primary focus is the former -
he highlights, and wishes to make amends for, our debt to the residents of those
lands from which we have in effect, and often actually, stolen resources. He makes
a clear point that "those with the least role in creating the problems bear the
greatest burdens. And those most responsible for the crises appear to escape
responsibility."
It is not solid material resources alone that we owe them for. He clearly
acknowledges the interconnectedness of resource use and movement with
complex ecological systems, especially in regard to global climate. In fact,
obsessively in regard to global climate - he remakes the same point over and
over and returns to weather change and it's disproportionate effect on the
world's poor almost as if it were the only way in which larger systems are impacted
on by capitalist-individualist and state-capitalist resource use. The sub-title
includes the words "the Health of the Planet", and climate is a major element
whose workings impact on the wider viability of ecosystems and thus upon the
health of the planet as a whole. So, as far as that goes, it is fair to put
some emphasis on global warming and the consequent rise of sea level, increase
in drought, erosion of soils through flash floods, and movement of traditional
storm zones towards high population areas and perhaps also growth of those zones
in area, etc. It is nonetheless a narrow focus.
His inclination to emphasise the aspect of ecological debt that seeks redress
for the current population of the Third World leads to an instrumentalist approach
to how we should deal with this debt. He suggests we make economic amends, such
that the cash value of our debt to Third Worlders be given to them to help them
bolster their shores against the damage caused by floods, or to buy in food from
other nations when drought occurs and harms their crops. This approach has obvious
problems - it has a 'sins of the father' aspect, which is uncomfortable, as it thus
has an underlying assumption that, should our reparations be deemed insufficient,
those to whom we have the debt might be within their rights to make war with us,
though we, as a generation, or as individuals, may have had little to do with the
iniquities and inequalities that our colonialist past has caused (however, there is a
clear sense in which those of us in the First World are still benefiting from these
past events, which is the point of the book).
Boom and Bust = Doom and Dust
It has also an implication (one that Simms would seek to avoid, as not his intention),
that perhaps those who live in the Third World, as nominally our equals, may be justified
in seeking to attain
our standard of living at our expense since it is us that have kept such riches
from them - the problem here is not that we are arguably culpable, which we are,
but that such aspiration is itself a disastrous eco-catastrophe waiting to happen,
as evidenced by the third form of ecological debt; nor is the problem that Third Worlders
might wish to have more per capita income, which, if achieved via the convergence Simms
hopes for, may not be the same as their rising as far as have (we must reduce
our wealth to a sustainable point, and there is no mileage for the future in todays poor
simply overshooting us).
Quite simply, the environment
requires we, as a species, pay our debt to it sooner rather than later, as that debt will cost
us far more than a bit of cash if we continue to ignore it. Tacitly, if unintentionally,
putting the argument that our wealth is really the wealth of people over
there may well lead the people over there to not merely take our wealth
but also the control of the sources of our wealth (fair enough so far) so that they
may ramp up their life-styles towards western standards of living. Here it heads
towards more problematic terrain - it may be fair to say that poorer nations, or at
least the poorest nations, should be enabled to increase their relative wealth
and that that should be at our expense (to some difficult to agree upon extent), but many inhabitants of such countries will likely want as much as we currently have, and will merely
resent the environmentalist argument that they cannot, as it is not Green. In order to
industrialise, many nations already have an attitude that the pollution we experienced
in developing a capitalist-consumerist society is a cost they are willing to pay,
just as we did, and that we have no right to tell them otherwise.
Simm's instrumentalist approach to managing the West's debt to Third World peoples
can, of course, respond to such problems by, for example, transferring clean
technologies to industrialising nations so that the expense of being 'green' is
not absorbed by their own economy, and thus by our global environment; or the third
world governments and their western advocates can seek economic retribution through
the courts; or Third World and industrial economies could exchange carbon credits; or
first world governments can instigate historically successful 'war economy' measures,
such as that expressed in the WWII rail advert he quotes - "At this most important time,
Needless travel is a 'crime'" (p159).
But this can only go so far, especially if we are to address the debt we have to the
biosphere as a whole.
For to do this, populations in the West must recalibrate
their 'needs' to a sustainable level, far below our current 'standard of living'.
Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death
"'It frequently happens that an element of the standard of living
which set out being primarily wasteful, ends with becoming a necessity
of life.'
Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class, 1899
quoted by Simms, p124
This 'standard of living' includes flights to the Caribbean; a TV in every
room; air conditioning; an SUV per household, if not two; second homes out of
town; copious packaging; etc, and all at a cost that fits the purse, even if that
means hiving off environmental costs to another day, and undervaluing the workers
who extract the raw materials on some other continent. That is to say, the
'standard of living' that we are so concerned to maintain, else we all starve and are
poor, has nothing to do with actual levels of consumption that might require starvation and
poverty as the only alternative. In other words, the Western lifestyle has a
great deal of give.
But our consumerist populations (created by a combination of native
greed and ad-exec brainwashing, the latter more powerful than many realise - Simms
attributes these messages to car adverts alone: 'You Can Have Power'; 'You Can Have Sex';
"You Can Protect What Matters To You'; 'You Can Make People Jealous of You'; 'You Can
Be Different') are in no hurry to accept restrictions on their consumption - such will
only happen once resources are depleted to the point that they have no choice, at
which time a considered and well calibrated transfer to sustainability will simply no
longer be possible. Thus, our fear of starvation and poverty as the only alternative
to our current way of living is exactly what guarantees that starvation and poverty
is what we will get.
Third World populations cannot meet us even halfway to our current standard of
living if the ecological debt we have created for ourselves in the west is not
merely to be horrifically increased by our counterparts in other countries who have not,
through accident of birth, been so lucky as us.
The instrumentalism of Simms solutions to ecological debt, and the emphasis on
debt to other humans, leaves the book lacking in punch, and leaves his ideas
as mere short-term panaceas to perhaps keep us from warring with our neighbours,
who currently have copious reason to hate us.
Simms does acknowledge wider debt, in fact is motive by this wider debt, but
has little, really, to say about it. Early chapters do make it clear that he is
very aware that technical fixes cannot be enough, and that, once used up, many
of the resources our economy requires to continue 'growth' cannot be replaced.
So clearly he understands the obvious fact that we cannot have a globe of rich
consumers. But little he says addresses the realities of actually convincing the majority
that a recalibration of 'need' is not only required (we all guiltily sense that,
even tabloid readers and the residents of the Big Brother house), but that it
can offer a more mature conception of how to define a positive standard of
living and thus can offer satisfaction, and not just hardship.
No More Waste
"'There will be no more waste of imperial resources. The people
are suffering. Relieving people's poverty ought to be handled
as though one were rescuing them from fire, or saving them from
drowning. One cannot hesitate'"
- The Years of Rice & Salt, by Kim Stanley Robinson
This radical strand of thought is not completely missing from Simms work.
On page 160, for example, he writes "Experience shows that a shift to a low
energy economy could create more convivial lifestyles".
This is a short but sweet sentence that nicely sums up one aspect, at least,
of Simms guiding philosophy of Contraction and Convergence. This concept
clearly recognises that we can't all live like the present day West, but
that to thrive we must, on the one hand lower our expectations of luxury
in the West, and, on the other, raise the standard of living in the poorest countries,
seeking to 'meet in the middle' (though I believe, rather below the mid-point if true sustainability is our goal). The consequences of such a method, ultimately,
would perhaps be communistic anarchism or some other variety of community
based egalitarianism. Simms in no way argues for such, though, seeking - so far
as this book goes at any rate - to engender the required change from within the
current system.
Despite the obvious requirement for more radicalism, should we truly seek to
address our ecological debt to both other humans and the biosphere as a whole,
it is not expressed sufficiently in this book. There is an implicit acceptance
that the nation states as currently set up, with their economic elites, and
their controlled medias, and their managed elections can achieve the required change.
I do not believe that
any approach that merely seeks to work with what we have got can succeed in the
long run. Ultimately Simms doesn't either - right near the end, he says "But global
warming probably means the death of capitalism as the dominant framework for the global
economy" - but the overall tenor of the book is instrumental reformism within the
system.
The Road To Hell
However, should we actually expect more from Simms than he does deliver? A
radical tract of eco-philosophy would probably not gain the readership and
influence that a lighter weight instrumentalist book may.
Simms takes an approach
that has similarities with Bob Geldof's Live8 idea - it is spreading the blame,
seeking consensus for viable short-term change, and liberal enough in tone to not
alienate those in government, NGO's and possibly some in industry. Seen as a tool
to aid an instrumentalist short-term solution, Simm's book, alongside other work
instigated by the NEF (new economics foundation), for whom he is policy
director, is positive, timely, and useful. On this playing field, the
only real negatives are that he is repetitive and uses too many examples from
climate change (i.e.; too few from other areas of ecological damage, such as
resource depletion and biodiversity); that the whole is an over-extended
essay that may have had greater impact in a national newspaper as a short
serial than as a book from a publisher who are well known but nonetheless not
mainstream; and that the section on 'what you can do', oddly buried
between the Notes and the Index at the end, is pretty much laughable.
The fact remains, though, that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Those that pursue piecemeal social change may succeed in changing the paving used on the road,
but not necessarily it's direction; whereas those who choose deeper revolution may succeed in
ripping up the road, but rarely have a firm alternative track onto which they can steer the
society they have de-railed. Luckily, society and culture are not fixed roads -
whilst there is great inertia resisting change, those that seek piecemeal reform
can reasonably hope that, given time, they may redirect the road itself from the
planned (whether by internal logic or by deliberate intent) route. This has three
obvious flaws - they believe that a quantitative change may become a qualitative
one (in philosophy the possibility of this is often denied, but the sciences allow
such, as for example in the change of state exhibited by water heated or cooled
beyond a certain parameter); they believe that those who favour the status quo
cannot ultimately co-opt or circumvent them; and they believe that they have the time
needed to slowly steer the ship of state. If the best way to avoid eco-collapse
and mass population die-off is either piecemeal reform, or a revolt that causes short-term
social collapse and a partial die-off, then I guess we must give what support we can to
the reformists.
– Review: Tim Barton
Reviewers:
RA - Robert Allen
TB - Tim Barton
SB - Steve Booth
ED - Éanna Dowling
EV - Eric Valencic
CG - Chellis Glendinning
RR - Rob Ray
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